A "Carry-by" amounts to serious trouble for the Coach attendant and conductor who allow it to happen. I'm pretty surprised at a lot of these comments. It's true that a coach attendant who is assigned two or three or four cars full of passengers cannot give very much personalized service. But coach attendants do have specific responsibilities that involve safely boarding and detraining passengers, providing service to those with disabilities as needed, keeping restrooms and other areas clean, etc. During the night, while you are sleeping, at least one coach attendant is usually required to be up at all times. When I worked the Capitol Limited (18 years ago), we had two coach attendants. I'm not sure whether I remember this correctly, but I think one got his or her sleep time from about 10 PM till 2 AM, and the other slept from 2 AM till 6AM. Four hours was all you got. I worked a coach job briefly on the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited, and the rest period was comparable. When several people in different cars need to be roused to detrain at a particular station, sometimes the attendant and conductor or A.C. will agree to split and share the duties.
Have the standards changed, or are you seeing coach attendants who aren't doing their jobs properly, or are you not seeing the attendants when they are doing their jobs in other parts of the train? I don't know. But I know I was always pretty tired at the end of a trip where I worked coaches.
Tom